Another track from one of my first bands, ZEN, when I was probably about 10 years old. It was me and my next door neighbor friend Brian Rolston, who was two years younger than me. Usually I sang, but on this track we got Brian’s little sister Carly to sing. She was probably about 5 or 6 years old.
YOU CAN OWN THIS TRACK AS AN MP3 VERSION««««««««
Brian had just started playing the drums (and went on to become a very good drummer and probably still is, but we haven’t kept in touch for like over 15 years). I had a casio keyboard. So we set up a boombox in the basement and started writing songs. The boombox went right on top of the washing machine and we pressed record + play at the same time.
I don’t know why we named the band ZEN, because we had no idea what “zen” meant. I remember we had originally named the band Soho, after a brand of soda that we liked. At this young age, we had no concept of the “cool soho” of New York City.
I guess we were trying to include Brian’s sister in our band, maybe we were forced to do it. I don’t remember. We told her to sing “yeah yeah yeah” and figured we could make a song out of it. This was long before the hip Brooklyn band the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. They probably got their name from us. This was long before me and my fiance got obsessed with singing “yeah yeah yeah” based on the song from THIS OLD HONEYCOMBS CEREAL COMMERCIAL (which features Big Bad Moe, the motorcycle maniac and a great 80s robot and some kids in a wooden club house).
I remember when the Ralston family moved onto our street. They moved two houses down from us. It used to be “the old scary house where the old lady lived”. You know the kind of house - the paint was chipping off, unkempt overgrown lawn… basically, no one was taking care of it. No kids went trick-or-treating there.
But then the old lady died. And the Ralstons moved in. It was a good day.
I remember Mr. Ralston, he was always a super-nice friendly guy, the guy that everyone in the neighborhood knew.
